Bill banning online assisted suicide would open up liability for sites

The House's bipartisan legislation targets not only the online activity of individual users, but also the operators of the websites that host it.

Lawmakers seek to make online aiding suicide a federal crime, pushing to hold both individual users and the tech companies and websites that allow this content on their platforms.

A bipartisan bill introduced Monday in the House of Representatives, the Stop Online Suicide Assistance Forums Act, comes amid concerns concern about youth suicide rates and growing evidence of online dangers.

The bill's lead sponsor cited a Times investigation published last December on a website where members share instructions on how to die and encourage each other to follow through with their suicide plans. The inquest identified 45 deaths linked to the site and found hundreds of posts suggesting the true toll was much higher.

"As a mom," said Rep. Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, the results were "terrifying and it motivated us to take action." Katie Porter, Democrat of California, and Republicans Mike Carey of Ohio and Chris Stewart of Utah co-sponsored the bill.

Even though the trail of suicides was linked on the site elongates - The Times has since identified dozens of additional deaths, including several young teenagers - no one involved faced legal consequences.

While most states have laws prohibiting suicide, they are inconsistent and rarely enforced, and do not explicitly address online activity. It is unclear to what extent suicide speech is protected by the First Amendment.

The new federal bill builds on a ruling by the Minnesota State Supreme Court, which held that offering suicide instructions in an online exchange was a crime.

Previous legislation aimed at addressing this issue, the Suzanne Gonzales Suicide Prevention Act, first proposed in 2007 and named for a 19-year-old who committed suicide after receiving instructions over the Internet, would also have made online assisted suicide a federal crime. It has been introduced several times but never received a vote.

The new bill would allow suits under an existing exception to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that governs online communications activity and generally protects website operators from liability for content posted by users. Exempt from protection are operators of websites that host content that violates federal criminal law.

While Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other platforms have banned in recent years users to share methods of suicide and encouraging self-harm, they have not completely eliminated it. Under the new bill, they could face up to five years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

The project of law does not criminalize the act of suicide or the encouragement thereof. Nor does it interfere with state laws that explicitly allow medical assistance in dying for the terminally ill.

Awareness and prevention organizations of suicide and the families of young people who died in connection with the suicide website have called for such legislation.

"This is at least an important step. We need to remove this online help,” said Sharon Luft, whose 17-year-old son, Matthew, committed suicide last year less than a month after joining the site.

When Matthew inquired about a specific method, another member was quick to respond with a link to detailed instructions on how to use it to die. Later he asked and received more detailed advice to make sure his efforts would work. At one point, he wondered if the method was working and asked if he should continue. Another member replied, "If you want the attempt to be successful, then yes."

"Websites that encourage...